Voices

How I Did the Impossible: HBO Without Cable TV

Published on November 5, 2013by Martin Peers

Life as a cord-cutter, without a pay television subscription, isn’t as much of a fringe activity as it might seem. Lots of TV shows are available for purchase on iTunes, often right after they first air on TV, and services like Netflix and Amazon.com offer cheap flat-rate options for catching up with others.

The one outlet whose content has typically been kept inside the walled garden of pay TV has been HBO. While someone willing to wait a few months could rent a DVD or buy an episode on iTunes, diehard fans who want to catch the latest episode of “Boardwalk Empire” or “Game of Thrones” as soon as it is available have had little choice but to subscribe to pay TV. (Well, they could engage in piracy, but that’s another story).